Synopsis: Communicative Competence

Introductions

Communication isn't just language it's much more than that. When we talk, speech is more or less accompanied by so called non-verbal communication: gesture, mimics, distance, attitude etc. We also send out signals about ourselves by the way we dress, our haircuts and our general appearance. We share the non-verbal communication with other living beings, but our language is a special form of communication, which is only for humans. Talking about modern language learning there is a concept that keeps appearing: Communicative Competence. When you read “Faghæftet for Engelsk 2” the words communication and competence is mentioned quite often. Communicative Competence has been one of the biggest key words in language teaching for many years and still is. But as the world gets more globule and thereby it increases interaction between different countries and cultures has made new demands on foreign language teaching. In order to try and understand what principles and ideas that lies behind this concept´s and in order to see what consequences this will have for language teaching I'll have to consider the following question;

How can a topic about Northern Ireland contribute to the student's communicative competence?

In the late 70s and early 80s focus shifted from linguistic competence to communicative competence. The goal of communicative language teaching Communicative Language Teaching is to enable the students to communicate in the target language. Linguistic skills are still a priority, but functional skills are given importance as well. The method includes meaningful tasks based on real communication; negotiation of meaning is a central task to fulfil this aim. Furthermore, students use the language a great deal through communicative activities such as games, role plays, and problem-solving tasks1. “By bridging a series of information gaps, learners will “naturally” develop their linguistic knowledge and skills, ultimately to the point where they will acquire native-speaker competence”2.

Different aspects of communicative competence

Learning a language with a communicative approach is not only acquiring knowledge of the system and using it. Communicative competence is a complex concept. According to Karen Lund communicative competence is also3:... Køb adgang for at læse mereAllerede medlem? Log ind